A Hat in Time is still getting new DLC, and Vanessa’s Curse is next on November 27

A frantic infection-style multiplayer mode

It’s simultaneously neat, funny, and impressive that A Hat in Time is still rolling out new content after all this time, and the latest release, the Vanessa’s Curse DLC, is releasing on November 27 — but only on Steam. It’s a crown-collecting online multiplayer mode.

As the trailer shows, Vanessa’s Curse builds on the lore of the main story, but it’s all about multiplayer with a gameplay hook similar to “infection” modes in other games.

In the DLC, players will need to leap around the world as quickly as possible to snatch up crowns while escaping their shadowy cursed pursuers, and there are also environmental modifiers like fog, deep freezes, and flash floods. Given the fun and frantic traversal in A Hat in Time, I can see this being tense as hell with the right group of players in the mix.

Outside of those inherent thrills, there’s a long-term progression angle with unlockable hats, flairs, and dyes in exchange for your crowns. Silly as it is, the doughnut hat is so me.

Vanessa’s Curse isn’t coming to consoles at least in part because it originates from the community — it’s from the Creator DLC program, which is “aimed at projects larger in scope than the typical mod.” So there are “technical limitations” to consider. In this case, Vanessa’s Curse was a collab between Werti and Jasmine, with support from Gears for Breakfast in the form of “developer feedback, QA support, and promotional work.”

This might not be in your wheelhouse, exactly, and I have a similar mindset. Well, there’s news for us too — the developers are “still hard at work on our second studio title,” which is a nice little reiteration. The game “isn’t related” to A Hat in Time, but for now, Gears for Breakfast says it’s stoked to “continue bringing new adventures to A Hat in Time.”